On this day in 1606, British provocateur Guy Fawkes—one of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, who sought to blow up Parliament and to assassinate King James I for his repression of Roman Catholics—was executed in London.
| 1977: | | The Pompidou Centre, a French national cultural centre named for former president Georges Pompidou, opened in Paris. |
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| 1966: | | | The Soviets launched Luna 9, the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon. |
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| 1958: | | Explorer 1 was the first artificial space satellite orbited by the United States, marking the country's entry into the space race. |
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| 1943: | | German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered to the Soviet Red Army at Stalingrad (now Volgograd), his troops surrendering two days later. |
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| 1797: | | Austrian composer Franz Schubert was born near Vienna. |
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